High Desert

by Wayne D. Overholser

  “Pride,” Latigo snorted. “They don’t have none. You’ve got it and I’ve got it. So’s Boone and so’s Stub. So’s Kitsie. It’s the one thing I was damned sure they had to have, and I taught it to ’em, but Gramp Tatum....” He brushed the thought away with a wave of his long-fingered hand and dug for another match. “Or Zane Biddle. Hell on a fishhook! They don’t know what the word means.”

  “They’ve got it,” Jim said earnestly. “It just ain’t our kind of pride, but after so much pushing, it gets to working on them. Then they’re dangerous.”

  Latigo laughed. “You’re spooked, Jim.” He struck the match and sucked the flame into the pipe bowl. “They’re weaklings. In this country, a weakling’s got to stick with the strong if he wants to live. Us Wyatts are strong, Jim. So are you. That’s where we’re likely to have trouble. When I gave you the star, I knew you’d never be a Bill Riley. At the same time, you ain’t smart if you start getting bull-headed.”

  “Who did give me this star?” Jim asked curiously. “Biddle said Boone did to get me away from Kitsie.”

  “We talked it over,” Latigo admitted. “I figured that you’d make a good sheriff, and Boone wanted you out from under Kitsie’s nose.” He rose. “If you’re trying to scare me, Jim, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m too old to scare.”

  “I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just trying to get you to see some sense. The Poverty Flat boys are in the Bonanza and they’re sure on the prod. I dunno what got them that way, but if you don’t go over and powwow with them, you’ve got some fighting to do before you leave town.”

  “What’s there to powwow about?” Latigo demanded.

  “They’ve got plenty to holler about,” Jim said bluntly, “like this business of using the bank to close some of them out when they don’t buckle down. Who are you after this time? Deeter?”

  Surprised, Latigo scratched his nose and gave Jim a long stare. “So?” he said as if this was something he hadn’t admitted even to himself.

  “Damn it, Latigo,” Jim exploded, “you started little once just like Lippy Ord and Buck Deeter and the rest of them. Boone and Stub can’t see their side because they’ve always been on the top rung, but you ought to.”

  Latigo moved to the window and automatically began packing his pipe again. “Don’t make no difference what you are, Jim. It’s the same thing, human or animal. It’s the strong that run things. Take a herd of wild horses. Or a wolf pack. What happens in Washington or when the state legislature meets? Same thing on a cattle range. I’m the big gun here. If Lippy Ord or Buck Deeter don’t want to play my game, I’ll bust ’em.”

  “Your hide isn’t tough enough to turn a bullet,” Jim murmured.

  Latigo wheeled from the window. “I can still outdraw the best of ’em if they had enough guts to throw down on me.”

  Staring at the old man now, Jim saw all of his pride and vanity mirrored in the hard set of his face. He realized only then that Latigo Wyatt would not back up a step, would surrender nothing, and for that stubbornness he was fated to die. Jim said: “They know you four come to town every Saturday morning. They know you never bring any of your hands, but a bunch of your boys will be in tonight. That’s why I’m guessing they figure on taking you and Boone and Stub today before you get a chance to leave town.”

  Latigo peered his disbelief in a snort of contempt. “They’ll have their hands full if they start anything, son. You tell ’em that.”

  “You afraid to talk to them in the Bonanza? Afraid to find out what’s eating on them?”

  “Afraid?” Latigo bawled the word like an enraged bull. “Hell’s bells, you know better’n that. Come on. I’ll talk to ’em and I’ll use a language even them limp-brained sons can understand. I’ll poke some hot lead down the throat of the first yahoo that opens his mug.”

  V

  Latigo stomped out through the bank and into the street, Jim behind him. Biddle, Jim saw, was gone, and he wondered why the banker had not stayed. He caught up with Latigo in the middle of the dust strip.

  He said: “Let them get it out of their systems, Latigo. Maybe just talking will do the job. You know how it is when a bunch gets steamed up. Sometimes a palaver lets the steam down.”

  “I don’t give a damn whether the steam’s down or not,” Latigo snapped, “but if they want to stop at talking, they’d better be damned careful what they say. I wouldn’t let nobody else talk to me like you’ve done....”

  A gun cracked from somewhere across the street. Before the echoes of that first shot died, Latigo Wyatt had stumbled and fallen on his face into the street dust.

  For an instant Jim Hallet stood paralyzed, a dozen thoughts rushing through his brain, thoughts that were compressed into a space of a clock tick. He had expected it to happen but not this way and not this soon.

  Another shot racketed into the hot stillness, the slug kicking up dust at Jim’s feet. Stooping, he grabbed Latigo’s shoulders and, lifting them, dragged the old man across the street to the boardwalk in front of the Bonanza. He never expected to make it. That second bullet had been aimed at him and had missed. A man who could cut Latigo down with a single shot wouldn’t be likely to miss again. But the hidden killer did miss. The third bullet was wide by three feet. Jim had Latigo off the street when another gun spoke three times, fast. He was facing the Bonanza and he didn’t know whether the slugs geysered the dust or not.

  Jim laid Latigo on the walk. He knelt beside him, vaguely aware of the scared faces of the Poverty Flat men who had bulged out of the saloon but still held back. He heard the thump of running steps and knew that Doc Horton had grabbed his black bag, as he always did when he heard gunfire, and was on his way. He was dimly conscious of these things, for his attention was focused on Latigo. The old man was dying and he knew it, and the knowledge brought a gaunt weakness to his face. He had killed others, but like many arrogant men, he had never expected to die. Now, for the first time since Jim had known him, he was afraid.

  “They done it, boy,” Latigo murmured, gripping Jim’s arm. “Boone ain’t man enough to run the Wagon Wheel. I never thought the day’d come when I wouldn’t be around. You’re my kind, Jim. You’ve got to help him.”

  Jim nodded. Latigo was right about Boone, but Boone wouldn’t see it.

  Doc Horton was there then. He tried to nudge Jim away, asking briskly: “Hit bad?”

  Jim didn’t move. It was only a matter of seconds, and Latigo had something more to say. A lesser man would already have been dead. Latigo’s grip on Jim’s arm was vise-like; blood bubbled on his lips. Somewhere he found the strength to say: “You marry Kitsie. Don’t let that damned pussyfooting Biddle get her.” Then his grip went slack, and his arm fell away. Latigo Wyatt was dead, and the long shadow that he had thrust over the valley for so long passed with him.

  Jim rose. “Get him off the street, Doc.” He nodded at Lippy Ord and the others who stood in the doorway. “Give him a hand, boys.”

  They came silently and respectfully, awed by the suddenness and violence of death when only a few minutes before they had been idly threatening this man who lay before them. Jim, his eyes ranging over them, saw that not all of them were there. Chris Vinton was gone. Buck Deeter. Gramp Tatum. A braggy kid named Bud Yellowby who had squatted recently in the fringe of the timber.

  “The girl,” Lippy Ord muttered. “Don’t let her see him, Jim.”

  Jim turned. Kitsie and Stub were hurrying along the walk. He moved toward them, blocking their path and gripping Kitsie’s arm. He said: “It’s Latigo. Get her out of town, Stub.”

  “He’s...dead?” the girl breathed.

  Jim nodded. “He’s gone.”

  “Who did it?” Stub demanded, facing him angrily.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why in hell ain’t you finding out?”

  “I’ll find out. Right now, I’m trying to keep this from hap
pening again. Somebody aims to rub the Wyatts out.”

  Kitsie was returning to the hotel. She had strength to hold back her feelings, but Jim knew how she had loved Latigo and he knew how much his death would hurt her, a hurt that would grow with time. But Stub didn’t stir. He was staring at Jim, violently hating him and still realizing that Jim was his one protection. Latigo had been the keystone. Now neither Boone nor Stub was strong enough to hold Wagon Wheel together, and Jim, watching Stub, sensed that the boy knew it.

  “Where’s Boone?” Jim asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll get your horse. Go back to the hotel and stay off the street.”

  The Wyatt horses were racked in front of the Mercantile. Jim strode quickly to them, fear prickling his spine. The killer might still be in one of the rooms over the Bonanza or in the hotel. Or on one of the roofs behind a false front. He had not located the dry-gulcher when the shots were fired. As he turned, leading Kitsie’s and Stub’s horses, he raised his gaze to rake the windows and false fronts, but there was no flash of fire, no snarling slug, nothing to indicate where the murderer had hidden or whether he was still there.

  The Poverty Flat men were knotted in front of the Bonanza. As Jim swung toward them, he saw that Buck Deeter had appeared.

  Deeter called: “Anything we can do?”

  “You’ve done plenty,” Jim said, and moved on.

  Jim tied the horses in front of the hotel and went in. None of the Wyatts was in sight. He climbed the stairs and turned along the hall to the front corner room that Latigo had kept rented for Kitsie, but before he reached it, the door opened, and Zane Biddle stepped out. His pink-cheeked face was held very sober as he closed the door.

  “I was just offering my condolences,” Biddle said. “I trust you will be careful what you say. Kitsie is terribly hurt.”

  Anger rose in Jim. He had never liked Biddle, and the man had plenty of reason to dislike him, but Biddle’s feelings for him were strictly masked behind the sympathetic soberness of his face.

  “Thanks for the advice,” Jim said, and started to move on toward the door, but Biddle stepped in front of him, a fat, moist hand laid on his arm. He whispered: “Do you know who fired the fatal shot?”

  “No.”

  Biddle looked over his shoulder at the closed door and then along the hall. He brought his mouth close to Jim’s ear. “Where was Boone at the time the shot was fired?”

  Jim straightened, his dislike of Biddle growing. “I don’t know.”

  Again, Biddle looked over his shoulder and brought his lips back to Jim’s ear. “Don’t tell them I’m suggesting this to you, but I know the situation in the Wyatt family better than anyone else. I know Boone hated his father, largely because of Latigo’s attitude toward Stub’s gambling losses. Boone insisted on paying them, and Latigo didn’t like that. He told me today that he was the only one who would draw on the Wyatt account from now on.”

  Jim’s mind reached ahead of Biddle. What the banker had just said gave Boone Wyatt plenty of motive for murder. Wagon Wheel would go to him with Latigo out of the way, and he was the kind of passion-ruled man who might easily be touched off into doing exactly what Biddle was insinuating.

  “I’ll find out about Boone,” Jim said.

  “It was just something I thought you should know,” Biddle said smugly.

  Biddle had turned away when Jim asked: “Where were you when Latigo was shot?”

  Biddle jumped as if he had been stung. He wheeled back to face Jim, suddenly angry. He opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. His hands fisted at his sides. When he had regained control of himself, he said with biting scorn: “I suppose it is your duty to investigate everybody, but I assure you I had no reason to kill Latigo. He was the main source of revenue for my bank.”

  “I asked you where you were.”

  Biddle jabbed a thumb at the door. “In there with Kitsie when the shot was fired. Ask her if you don’t believe me.” Turning, he walked down the hall, the tip of his nose working, shoulders back, an aroused and insulted man.

  Jim watched him until he disappeared down the stairs, a grim smile touching his lips. A pudgy man acting insulted had always been a comical sight to him, but he saw little humor in Zane Biddle now. He stood there a moment, letting the seed of suspicion that Biddle had planted grow in him. He wondered at the man’s motives, but whatever they were, he knew he could not ignore what the banker had said.

  Jim tapped on Kitsie’s door. He waited, uneasiness working in him. The moments that lay ahead would be hard on Kitsie, but he saw no way to soften them. She opened the door and stood there, straight-backed and motionless. Without waiting for an invitation, he stepped into the room.

  It was a sort of sitting room with expensive furniture, a thick rug, and red velours drapes on the windows. A door to the left opened into a small bedroom. The man who had built the hotel years before, when the land was new and held an unkept promise, had called it his bridal suite, but Latigo had promptly rented it permanently because, as he put it, nobody else in the valley was important enough to have it. Later, when Kitsie had grown up, it became her personal quarters whenever she came to town.

  “Well?” Kitsie did not move, her tone sharp.

  “Where’s your dad?” Jim asked. “Does he know?”

  “I have no idea,” Kitsie said.

  Stub, sitting beside the window, rose and crossed the room to Jim. He was still a boy, although old enough to be a man, and he could not grow up fast enough now that he faced a man’s job. His voice breaking a little, he said: “Get out.”

  “Just a minute, sonny.” Jim crossed to the door that opened into the bedroom, looked in, and swung back. “Where was Biddle when that shot was fired?”

  “In here, talking to us,” Kitsie said. “If it’s any of your business.”

  She wouldn’t lie. Jim was as sure of that as he could be sure of anything that depended upon the uncertainty of human behavior. He crossed the room to her, ignoring Stub.

  He said: “Kitsie, I didn’t love Latigo like you did, but I liked him and I respected him. I’m going to get the man that killed him.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I need your help. Where was your dad at the time Latigo was shot?”

  “I don’t know. I told you that. He came up with Stub and me after we left Nell’s place. We talked, and he left. He didn’t say where he was going.”

  “How long was that before the shooting?”

  “I don’t know. Fifteen or twenty minutes. I don’t see what it’s got to do with....” Then she saw what was in his mind and she froze, eyes wide. “You don’t think he could have killed Granddad? Jim, why did I ever think I loved you?”

  He said: “Stub, I told you to get her out of town. Your horses are in front.” Turning from her, he left the room, his face hard-touched by the misery that was in him.

  VI

  Again, Jim Hallet faced a decision, as brutal as any he had faced in the past. As sheriff, he must question Boone Wyatt, perhaps arrest him for Latigo’s murder, perhaps shoot him if he resisted arrest. Then he remembered Kitsie’s frozen, wide-eyed face, and a dull hopelessness crawled through him.

  Only a few hours before she had come to town loving him, looking forward to meeting him, to going to Nell Craft’s place as she had week after week. It had been a good world, bright with hope, hope that had lasted even after he had faced Boone in the street, after Kitsie had walked out of Nell’s house with her father, for hope is hard to kill when a man is in love. Then Latigo had said that if Kitsie were his girl, he would favor Jim, and hope had flamed again. Now Latigo was dead, and duty laid a club against Jim’s back, offering him no reward.

  For half an hour Jim searched the hotel rooms that faced the street, the alley, and roof tops behind the false fronts. For all of Boone Wyatt’s top-heavy pride and loud-mouthed ar
rogance, Jim found it hard to believe that he had killed his father. He kept remembering that Chris Vinton had not been with the Poverty Flat men in front of the Bonanza when Latigo had been shot. Neither had Buck Deeter nor the Yellowby kid. He could count Gramp Tatum out. The old man was drunk and sleeping it off in the alley.

  The half hour brought no clue. No tracks. No empty shells. No hint of where the killer had stood and no hint as to his identity. Jim had asked the Poverty Flat men to stay in town. Now he returned to the Bonanza, not liking this task and sensing that it would bring him nothing.

  They were all there, idly talking, a few drinking, some trying to interest themselves in a game of poker and failing. Jim moved directly to Vinton and asked: “Where were you, Chris, when Latigo was shot?”

  Vinton’s battered face held no apparent resentment. He said: “In the back room with Deeter and Yellowby. We had a little poker game going.” His bruised lips shaped into a crooked grin. “I was ready to pull on Latigo any day in the year, but this time I didn’t have my gun. Remember?”

  Jim nodded. Vinton’s Colt was in his waistband where he had placed it after the fight, but there were other guns. He swung to Deeter, but before he could put the question, the Staircase man nodded. “He’s giving it to you straight, Jim. We were having a game.”

  Without being asked, the Yellowby kid said: “That’s it, Sheriff.”

  Jim’s eyes swept the line of men along the bar, a bitter sense of frustration rushing at him. Maybe Deeter and Yellowby were lying to cover up for Vinton, but he couldn’t prove it. Not yet. Yellowby was weak. He had thought Deeter was on the level, but now he was not sure. There was no sympathy on their faces, no friendliness.

  “Damn it,” Jim said in sudden anger. “I was bringing Latigo over to talk to you when somebody cut him down. Facing him with a gun in your hand is one thing, but drilling him like someone did is murder.”